I have news for you. The rest of the world considers the community surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky to be a quasi-cult comprised mostly of people who brainwash each other into thinking they are smart, rational, etc., but who are in fact quite ignorant of a lot of technical facts, and incapable of discussing anything in an intelligent, coherent, rational manner.

[citation needed]

In all seriousness, as far as I know, almost no one in the world-at-large even knows about the Less Wrong community. Whenever I mention "Less Wrong" to someone, the reaction I get is "What are you talking about?" So I'm not sure how the rest of the world logically could have an opinion about Eliezer Yudkowsky, or people who believe the same things as him.

If you really want to convince people whom you believe are in a cult that Eliezer Yudkowsky is a deluded lunatic, you shouldn't make false assertions without evidence, or true statements worded in a way that could easily be interpreted as conveying something fairly obviously false.

As for me personally, if Eliezer is a deluded lunatic, then I am a deluded lunatic, and I would like to know that as soon as possible if that is the case. If you were mistaken, and Eliezer knew what he was talking about, would you prefer to know the same, and publicly retract your previously statements? If that happened, and you did, I know I for one would congratulate you publicly.

You folks live in an echo chamber in which you tell each other that you are sensible, sane and capable of rational argument, while the rest of the world are all idiots.

I dunno, I had seen plenty of evidence that "the rest of the world are all idiots" (assuming I understand you correctly) long before encountering LessWrong. I don't think that's an echo chamber (although other things may be.)

(Although I must admit LessWrong has a long way to go. This community is far from perfect.)

I have news for you. The rest of the world considers the community surrounding Eliezer Yudkowsky to be a quasi-cult comprised mostly of people who brainwash each other into thinking they are smart, rational, etc., but who are in fact quite ignorant of a lot of technical facts, and incapable of discussing anything in an intelligent, coherent, rational manner.

"The rest of the world"?

I'm aware of one small community that believes this (RationalWiki). I'm also aware of a sort of cloud of people who, while they may quite emphatically reject LessWrong, nonetheless seem to mostly hang out around people who know about it. Beyond that ... I don't think LessWrong is high profile enough; maybe those involved in some related fields might have opinions on it, having encountered LWers in the course of their work ...

This comment will, of course, be deleted or downvoted as soon as possible.

Well ... yeah. Downvoted, that is, and if you keep starting arguments in the middle of unrelated threads, yes, they will probably be deleted.

However, if you wish to actually argue against specific claims routinely made on this site, I for one will certainly try to give you a fair hearing.

I would advise you to check out the discussions surrounding previous discussions on those topics (to make sure you have responses for the most common arguments), and generally be very careful to avoid making poor or confused arguments LWers have been trained to identify among the opposition.

If you want evidence for or against my statement, use scientific methods to do some sampling, and then compute the likelihood that what I have said above is correct: ask some very smart people from outside to come here, look over your discussions and give an opinion. And then decide what to do when they tell you that, yes, you are a cult led by a fool.

I routinely use LessWrong articles whenever I need to reference a concept common here in a discussion, and thus far have seen little evidence for your claim. Then again, maybe I was talking to the wrong people.

What criteria did you have in mind for "very smart"? Or, for that matter, "look over your discussions?" Are you suggesting giving people links to the Sequences, randomly selected discussion threads, or simply the front page?